Starlink : Markets and Marketing

[vsatman]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/russia-may-fine-citizens-who-use-spacexs-starlink-internet-service/

Russia may fine citizens who use SpaceX’s Starlink Internet service
Russia is planning its own Internet from space plan, called Sphere.
Russia's legislative body, the State Duma, is considering fines for individuals and companies in the country that use Western-based satellite Internet services. The proposed law seeks to prevent accessing the Internet by means of SpaceX's Starlink service, OneWeb, or other non-Russian satellite constellations under development.

This news is secondary. In 2018, a government decree was adopted on the rules for issuing permits for foreign satellite systems to the Russian market (the mandatory presence of a gateway in Russia and the requirement that all traffic go through it and be controlled by the FSB. And the consent of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB and the Presidential Security Service (FSO). This law is just an addition to the law on how violators will be punished in 2018. At the moment, even OneWEB, which had a joint venture with Roscosmos, has not received permission for frequencies in Russia.

In general, I think as long as Putin controls Russia, Western satellite systems will not receive permission to enter the Russian market. But Russia is a difficult market for Starlink (OneWeb, Kuiper ), the price  of 100-200 Mbps of Internet  plus up to 100 TV channels via fiber is 8-10 dollars per month. The population in the provinces of Russia is significantly poorer than in the United States. In my opinion, the market size for Russia is 100,000 customers (50% from B2B market )

[Tommyboy]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/russia-may-fine-citizens-who-use-spacexs-starlink-internet-service/

Russia may fine citizens who use SpaceX’s Starlink Internet service
Russia is planning its own Internet from space plan, called Sphere.

by Eric Berger - Jan 12, 2021 2:11pm GMT

Russia's legislative body, the State Duma, is considering fines for individuals and companies in the country that use Western-based satellite Internet services. The proposed law seeks to prevent accessing the Internet by means of SpaceX's Starlink service, OneWeb, or other non-Russian satellite constellations under development.

By itself this is a piece of news and an update. But it invites a discussion of possible response by western nations policy/laws to ban Russian Satellite Internet Services. Which would be only allowed as a L2 policy discussion.

If there is interest in discussing such, make a new L2 Policy Discussion thread to cover it.

Although the pure economic impact to Starlink of no Russia customers business revenues is still appropriate for discussion here.

Russia has a hugh rural area that would benefit from a Starlink like Internet service. So far Starlink is only allowing UT's use in countries that have allowed it. So it is only a future revenue loss and not a loss/reduction from current revenue. Later after the Russia equivalent systems are well established or fail completely there may be a possible licencing of limited UT use in Russia where the Russia system just cannot handle/support the "customers".

This is not an unexpected event I believe from SpaceX plans for Starlink.

Samizdat (Russian: самизда́т, lit. "self-publishing") was a form of dissident activity across the socialist Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader.

I can't get the link to embed properly. It's  from wikipedia.

Prohibition, in all its legislative forms, only creates dissidents and a black market. Not sure how it would be shaped in this context but them Russian folks have a rich tradition to uphold.

Edit: not exactly policy.

Hits on possible embedded protocols for the UT's, sats, and Gateways. One would be where there would be a GPS receiver that on power up would record the location. If outside it's licensed area would then power back down. Also such location data may be required for taxation anyway. The other would be in the sats and Gateways if a country required all traffic to go through a Gateway in their country for a UT operating in their country. These two protocols may or may not exist. Without existing then operation is for no Internet restrictions anywhere where Starlink UT's are operating. And any UT can operate in any country for which there is a "Landing" license.

Further detailed discussion on such possible protocols sould be in the protocols thread. But discussion as to whether SpaceX will add such protocols for being able to get "Landing" licences in restrictive countries would be discussed here as long as it stays away from national policies and just as a SpaceX policy.

That there is a GPS receiver in the starlink UT has already been confirmed, so geofencing is just a matter of a few lines of code. To be honest, it would surprise me if SpaceX HASN'T implemented that, in order to make sure that the UT can't transmit in countries where SpaceX is not licensed to transmit on the applicable frequencies.

[vsatman]

The other would be in the sats and Gateways if a country required all traffic to go through a Gateway in their country for a UT operating in their country.

since I am closer to Europe and familiar with the telecom business there, I can say that 99% of the telecom authority in Germany will require that the police in Germany have access to all traffic of Starlink subscribers in Germany and the easiest way to do this is to route this traffic through the gateway in Germany ... Europe now has big problems with terrorists

[mandrewa]

I doubt SpaceX will sell its service to or service a wayward Starlink antenna that somehow manages to appear in a territory that Starlink doesn't have a license to operate in.  So I don't think think there will be any people in Russia using Starlink.

But it seems to me like shooting oneself in the foot for the Russian government to do this.  I can see negotiating an agreement with SpaceX on just how Starlink specifically works in Russia and what it would cost, but Starlink would be a blessing for Russia as Russia has a great many people without adequate access to the internet.

Further the Russian constellation Sphere will likely need access to the markets of other countries for it to be viable, and especially Western countries, and this policy towards Starlink invites the denial of that licensing to Sphere in both the United States and its allies.

[matthewkantar]

Given the progress of post Soviet Russian tech efforts, it will be 2050 before they have a functional system.

[david1971]

If the "penalty" for using Starlink in Russia boils down to a fine, how is it different than a de facto tax? 

People might be willing to pay a big fine, much larger than the size of a tax that would generate belly-aching. 

At the end of the day, this might just be Russia toying with the price points of supply & demand to drive revenue away from SpaceX and towards their government.

[r8ix]

As  long as the Gateways providing the feed for the satellites over Russia are subject to the same restrictions as other Russian ISPs, Starlink should, in theory, be OK there. At least until ISL is working. National pride issues, on the other hand, may lead to a different outcome.

[Lar]

If the "penalty" for using Starlink in Russia boils down to a fine, how is it different than a de facto tax? 

People might be willing to pay a big fine, much larger than the size of a tax that would generate belly-aching. 

At the end of the day, this might just be Russia toying with the price points of supply & demand to drive revenue away from SpaceX and towards their government.

A fine, or jail time.

[groundbound]

I'm not sure this is the right thread but I want to report that I got a Starlink Beta invitation. This is interesting because I had almost concluded I would never get one: we live in a pretty high population density area.

Relevant details: 46 degrees north, so that is fine. But my zip code is relatively dense suburbia. We are about 8 air miles from the metro area urban core, and about 3 air miles from where the metro area starts to gradually taper off into (still well populated) exurbs. My suburban county alone has a population of roughly 1/3 of a million. I run up to 10 miles a day and there is almost no place in my running radius from home that isn't either endless tract housing or else apartment blocks.

Some things are going on in my life right now that prevent my being able to deal with any slightly fiddly issues with setting up Starlink so I will not be subscribing. But I was frankly surprised so thought I would report here.

[vsatman]

If the "penalty" for using Starlink in Russia boils down to a fine, how is it different than a de facto tax? 

People might be willing to pay a big fine, much larger than the size of a tax that would generate belly-aching. 

At the end of the day, this might just be Russia toying with the price points of supply & demand to drive revenue away from SpaceX and towards their government.

A fine, or jail time.

The law is primarily about companies (providers), and 1 million rubles will ruin them, in addition, the terminal itself will be confiscated and destroyed.
I agree that StarLink or OneWEB would bring many benefits to Russia, especially since the Sphere is not absolutely analogous to Starlink ..
But the political situation is now just like that

Edit/Lar: Fix quote nesting

[su27k]

Not directly related to Starlink, but interesting: Google's parent firm is shutting down Loon internet company

Time to pivot to Starlink maybe?

[Jake-ZA]

A recent article on the status/availability of Starlink in South Africa limited rollout by 2022:

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadband/385885-spacex-starlink-internet-service-pre-orders-open-in-south-africa.html

It still seems priced at the US$ rate of US$99 per month. I suppose it's still very early days for regional pricing, and there's no information on licensing or other "permission" to run here. I suppose there needs to be a simplified/legal way of paying ZAR1460 per month on an ongoing basis to a foreign company?

However, there have been interesting local developments, perhaps as a result of Starlink being on the horizon. In the smallish city I live in, home Internet access has mainly been by ADSL (reasonably priced), or via cellular data, which is pretty expensive. In the past two months, two companies have started installing fibre to the home, something I never expected to see in my lifetime. They are:

https://www.frogfootfibre.com/frogfoot/myaccount/home/home.jsp?brand=

https://www.herotel.com/hero-fibre/

Today Frogfoot trenched our entire street, a noteworthy accomplishment in comparison to  more mundane matters like the local authorities inability to fix potholes for years at a time, and have installed blow fibre tubing to each house. They still have to finish off by installing junction boxes and the fibre pairs, but it seems that within two months they will have installed fibre all over Grahamstown, and wiil go live.

The interesting thing is bandwidth availability and cost. At present my ADSL costs me ZAR600 per month, plus an additional R200 month to the local Telco for a landline. This gets me 4 mbps down, 1 mbps up, uncapped. In reality, I get a bit better than this, maybe 6 mbps down. For a retired individual with no young people in the house it's more than adequate for keeping tabs on Youtube for Tesla and SpaceX activities, plus cooking tips and the odd download and streaming.

Switching to FTTH via the same ISP will cost me ZAR599 per month for 10 mbps down, 1 mbps up uncapped. Plus I could save ZAR200 per month by cancelling my Telco landline - appealing seeing my ISP throws in a free hour or two per month of free VoIP capability, plus claiming to sort out number portabilty.

Interesting that all this has appeared "out of nowhere" since Starlink started operating... it's as if these guys suddenly worked out it might be better to make a bit of money rather than no money at all in the long term.

Simplistically, given current US based Starlink pricing at US$99 (= ~ZAR1460) per month, Starlink is not a cost effective solution for my personal situation. Others will find it a good deal, particularly those who've worked out it doesn't make sense to work from home in a big city if you can get good Internet in a bucolic seaside resort somewhere.

For the sake of completeness, my ISP can provide 100 mbps down, 10 mbps up, uncapped, for just under ZAR1000 per month. Other ISPs can provide up to 1 gbps down and up, uncapped, for about ZAR1800 per month. I'll be interested to see if Starlink can, or will, or be allowed to, match these sorts of prices when they start moving seriously into the 2nd and 3rd world.

[edit: Fix up $199 overpricing to $99 real monthly cost. ZA price stays the same... Thanks for noticing!]

[archae86]

Somewhere in the last day or two Elon asserted that the intention is a single worldwide price.  Initially it won't come close to covering the huge ramp of expenditure.  At maturity he hopes they can gradually lower the price after the system turns cash flow positive.

With respect to service in South Africa (or Australia), I believe that acquiring and provisioning the required ground stations and connection of those stations to backbone Internet will be a very heavy cost for years to come.  As in the USA, the service is much better suited to serving users in out-of-the-way places to which no one is running fiber than to compete with fiber on the same block.

[Jake-ZA]

Oops - redirected. Apologies.

You're right that groundstations will be a non-zero cost to SpaceX, and it's not obvious they'll have enough initial take up to offset the cost.

Availability of local and undersea bandwidth is not the issue - the local university, Rhodes University, connects, affordably, to a redundant 10 gigabit national REN backbone, and there is plenty of capacity on cables to Europe, Middle and Far East and South America.

The real problem is last mile connectivity to remote and poor areas (as it is everywhere on the planet).

I still wonder if  would have seen FTTH in my rapidly decreasing lifetime if it wasn't for Starlink.

[ncb1397]

For educational purposes, here are contemporary quotes from ViaSat and HughesNet. Installation(from memory) tends to be cheaper than $500 (if they charge at all). I'm curious what kind of commitment comes attached to the $500 up front fee.

I see. So Starlink will suck up virtually all their customers at those prices. Those companies each make about $2 billion in revenue apiece.

SpaceX is gonna make SO much money...

(Notice the HughesNet one requires a 24 month commitment, and the prices for the other one are only for the first 3 months...)

Pursuant to actually measurable affects, Viasat lost ~7,000 fixed U.S. subscribers last quarter (603K ->596K) or ~1.1%. At that rate, it will take ~85 quarters or 21-22 years to reach 0. Echostar should report in the next week or two.

source: http://investors.viasat.com/static-files/b273f869-6a88-4853-9ae9-6edf634e71f6

Uhm, so you are extrapolating the Viasat rate of decline during the Starlink limited Beta phase to predict the future rate of decline as Starlink reaches full operational capacity? Sure, that makes perfect sense🙄.

Literally a post or two above we see that Starlink has 10000 users as of now. Compared to the tens of millions the full system is designed for. Might want to consider revising that extrapolation a tad.

I will continue to revisit this extrapolation every 3 months.

HughesNet lost 27,000 subscribers in the U.S but gained 11,000 in Latin America. Net Loss was 16,000 subscribers out of 1,564,000. That suggests 98 quarters to reach zero or 24-25 years.

https://ir.echostar.com/node/16346/pdf

[Tommyboy]

I will continue to revisit this extrapolation every 3 months.

HughesNet lost 27,000 subscribers in the U.S but gained 11,000 in Latin America. Net Loss was 16,000 subscribers out of 1,564,000. That suggests 98 quarters to reach zero or 24-25 years.

Why would you? Your numbers are meaningless. Just as meaningless as assuming all 16.000 of those subscribers went to Starlink, indicating a rough growth of 1600% (estimated 1000 subscribers three months ago, 17.000 now). Extrapolating that growth of 1600% each quarter will put Hughesnet out of business in about 4-5 months.

[LouScheffer]

Presumably Starlink must act differently depending on which country the terminal resides in.  There are laws, such as the European "right to be forgotten", that affects search results depending on country.

This involves both removing the results from its European sites - such as Google.fr, Google.co.uk and Google.de - as well as restricting results from its other sites - such as Google.com - if it detects a search is being carried out from within Europe.

I'd guess Starlink uses the GPS location of the terminal to assign an internet address in a different block for each country.  Then the server end can simply use a block-address-to-country map to determine how to respond to a query.  Similarly, to support government mandated wire-tapping, presumably a station near a border would need to be routed through a ground station in the respective country.   It's not obvious to me how this will be supported with inter-satellite links - perhaps a global list of links to be wire-tapped would be sent to all ground stations, so no matter where link finally returns to ground, a copy of the data could be sent to the appropriate government.  Dealing with hundreds of countries, with different laws in each, is going to be a royal headache.

[groundbound]

Presumably Starlink must act differently depending on which country the terminal resides in.  There are laws, such as the European "right to be forgotten", that affects search results depending on country.

This involves both removing the results from its European sites - such as Google.fr, Google.co.uk and Google.de - as well as restricting results from its other sites - such as Google.com - if it detects a search is being carried out from within Europe.

I'd guess Starlink uses the GPS location of the terminal to assign an internet address in a different block for each country.  Then the server end can simply use a block-address-to-country map to determine how to respond to a query.  Similarly, to support government mandated wire-tapping, presumably a station near a border would need to be routed through a ground station in the respective country.   It's not obvious to me how this will be supported with inter-satellite links - perhaps a global list of links to be wire-tapped would be sent to all ground stations, so no matter where link finally returns to ground, a copy of the data could be sent to the appropriate government.  Dealing with hundreds of countries, with different laws in each, is going to be a royal headache.

Adjacent to what you just said is that once ISLs are in operation, there will be a large political and regulatory risk. Even if Starlink is able to easily implement all the various country requirements, the appearance that they have the technology which if abused could completely trash each country's data requirements is likely to draw suspicion and extreme government scrutiny.

I'm sure they will get lucky and dodge that bullet in some countries. In others it may make business difficult or even insurmountable.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Presumably Starlink must act differently depending on which country the terminal resides in.  There are laws, such as the European "right to be forgotten", that affects search results depending on country.

This involves both removing the results from its European sites - such as Google.fr, Google.co.uk and Google.de - as well as restricting results from its other sites - such as Google.com - if it detects a search is being carried out from within Europe.

I'd guess Starlink uses the GPS location of the terminal to assign an internet address in a different block for each country.  Then the server end can simply use a block-address-to-country map to determine how to respond to a query.  Similarly, to support government mandated wire-tapping, presumably a station near a border would need to be routed through a ground station in the respective country.   It's not obvious to me how this will be supported with inter-satellite links - perhaps a global list of links to be wire-tapped would be sent to all ground stations, so no matter where link finally returns to ground, a copy of the data could be sent to the appropriate government.  Dealing with hundreds of countries, with different laws in each, is going to be a royal headache.

Adjacent to what you just said is that once ISLs are in operation, there will be a large political and regulatory risk. Even if Starlink is able to easily implement all the various country requirements, the appearance that they have the technology which if abused could completely trash each country's data requirements is likely to draw suspicion and extreme government scrutiny.

I'm sure they will get lucky and dodge that bullet in some countries. In others it may make business difficult or even insurmountable.

The basic discussion of closed Internet (countries that control what websites can be reached by their people) and open Internet (countries that have no restrictions on access to any websites anywhere). The discussion gets messy when you add in the Big Tech (private) involvement in the flow of information or in restricting it. But there it is not a matter of licencing. Only governments control through licencing.

Also the other dimension is military usage all over the World of the same basic system as commercial. Governments other than the one that launched the sats can only control the ground terminals usage (UTs and Gateways) licencing. The impact to Starlink sale of services may be short lived due to the inability to restrict access in the future (in a decade or two) by anyone government or private. Starlink will not be the only system.

Countries would probably rather have SpaceX/Starlink be an active policing agent in what UTs are active in their borders than to not have them be a partner. Such access control would be a service offered to such countries at some significant direct cost to a country that wants to restrict access to content by any operating UTs within it's borders. In most cases because of the local economies there may not be much of a market for Starlink anyway. At least until it's monthly Internet service prices drop significantly as in <$20 a month.

[Asteroza]

Presumably Starlink must act differently depending on which country the terminal resides in.  There are laws, such as the European "right to be forgotten", that affects search results depending on country.

This involves both removing the results from its European sites - such as Google.fr, Google.co.uk and Google.de - as well as restricting results from its other sites - such as Google.com - if it detects a search is being carried out from within Europe.

I'd guess Starlink uses the GPS location of the terminal to assign an internet address in a different block for each country.  Then the server end can simply use a block-address-to-country map to determine how to respond to a query.  Similarly, to support government mandated wire-tapping, presumably a station near a border would need to be routed through a ground station in the respective country.   It's not obvious to me how this will be supported with inter-satellite links - perhaps a global list of links to be wire-tapped would be sent to all ground stations, so no matter where link finally returns to ground, a copy of the data could be sent to the appropriate government.  Dealing with hundreds of countries, with different laws in each, is going to be a royal headache.

Adjacent to what you just said is that once ISLs are in operation, there will be a large political and regulatory risk. Even if Starlink is able to easily implement all the various country requirements, the appearance that they have the technology which if abused could completely trash each country's data requirements is likely to draw suspicion and extreme government scrutiny.

I'm sure they will get lucky and dodge that bullet in some countries. In others it may make business difficult or even insurmountable.

The basic discussion of closed Internet (countries that control what websites can be reached by their people) and open Internet (countries that have no restrictions on access to any websites anywhere). The discussion gets messy when you add in the Big Tech (private) involvement in the flow of information or in restricting it. But there it is not a matter of licencing. Only governments control through licencing.

Also the other dimension is military usage all over the World of the same basic system as commercial. Governments other than the one that launched the sats can only control the ground terminals usage (UTs and Gateways) licencing. The impact to Starlink sale of services may be short lived due to the inability to restrict access in the future (in a decade or two) by anyone government or private. Starlink will not be the only system.

Countries would probably rather have SpaceX/Starlink be an active policing agent in what UTs are active in their borders than to not have them be a partner. Such access control would be a service offered to such countries at some significant direct cost to a country that wants to restrict access to content by any operating UTs within it's borders. In most cases because of the local economies there may not be much of a market for Starlink anyway. At least until it's monthly Internet service prices drop significantly as in <$20 a month.

Never underestimate the thirst for bandwidth by expats and retirees hiding out in warm locales. That's the thin edge of the internet wedge.